I would say great tonal range recovery but nothing incredible...Is this your first Nikon DSLR or did you move from a very old model perhaps ?

I have just returned to shooting Nikon after many years of Canon cameras. Because of my familiarity with Canon files I did find the tonal range recovery here to be quite impressive. I very seldom let my images get this far overexposed other than in an HDR bracket where the individual images are usually not explored this way. I love the D800e and continue to be impressed with its files every time I shoot. Many assignments that I've done in the past couple of years could be substantially improved by using this system. It might have been a knee-jerk reaction, but one that has again taught me something and made me explore the limits of these digital files with the help of all these comments.

no problem here, your reaction is quite understandable. I moved from Nikon to Canon only for a brief time (video dslr), and rushed back to Nikon for this reason and many others. (better hardware and software implantation, better sensors,AIS direct compatibility)